


February Words #17: Detective

by StaringAtTheTwinSuns



Series: February Words (2018) [16]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Injury, Major Character Injury, Millennium Falcon - Freeform, Multi, Quasi-medical stuff, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 07:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13713306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StaringAtTheTwinSuns/pseuds/StaringAtTheTwinSuns
Summary: Leia only dozes off for a minute, but when she wakes up, Han is at death's door.  With Luke and Ben too far away to help, Leia must use the Force to figure out what happens, and to keep Han with her for long enough to get home.Part of my February 2018 prompt challenge.  Related to #9 (background on Leia not becoming a Jedi) but can also stand alone.  OT3 (Han/Luke/Leia) AU universe, but this one focuses on Han and Leia.





	February Words #17: Detective

**Author's Note:**

> This one was hard to write... uninspiring prompt plus weird idea that probably needed more research than I was able to do in a single day. As always, concrit is welcome, but be kind? :)

~37 ABY~

“That,” Leia said, as she practically collapsed into one of the  _ Falcon _ ’s passenger seats, “was the worst ‘diplomatic mission’ we’ve been on in awhile.”

“You can say that again.” Han pulled up the coordinates. “All right, Chewie. Ready to make the jump?”

Chewie growled an affirmative, and the cockpit lit up with the familiar glow of hyperspace.

It took about ten seconds before one of the  _ Falcon _ 's alarms started to wail.

Han cursed under his breath. "Must be the thermo-stabilizer. I'll go check on it." He paused, right at the door to the cockpit, and kissed Leia gently on the top of her head. "Don't worry, Princess. We'll get you home safe."

Leia shook her head. "I have no doubt of that. Go do your thing, scoundrel."

She closed her eyes, and reached out with the Force to where Luke was waiting for them. Home. The mission had been a failure, but Leia knew by now that failures were just a part of life. There would be plenty more of them, but also plenty of successes, and between them all there was the comfort, the rock of her family. She focused on that.

"Ben's with him," she said, and Chewie cooed a question.

"No. Nothing's wrong... just Ben, and some of Luke's old students." They felt happy, content, like whatever they were doing it was full of laughter and joy.

Leia closed her eyes. The jump would take a couple of hours, and there was really nothing for her to do in the meantime. She would just relax, and nap, and focus on the the thought of getting home.

***

The ship rocked to the side. Something exploded. And something in the Force began to scream.

_ Han _ .

Leia was awake and halfway to the maintenance bay before she really understood what she had felt. She simply knew that she had to get to Han. That something was wrong. That he was in pain.

She felt rather than heard Chewie behind her, felt Luke, at the other end of the world, cry out in shock and fear. She pushed them out. Leia was no Jedi, but Luke had taught her to put up her shields, and she pushed back with all of her might against all of the other emotions that threatened to sweep her away.

There was only Han.

He was unconscious, collapsed on the floor in front of a sparking, burning console. “Han! Wake up!” Leia heard herself scream. “Chewie! Chewie, what happened?”

Chewie didn’t know, and Leia knew he didn’t know, but he took Han in his arms and gently shook him.

“No.” Leia wasn’t sure why, but she knew, somehow, that wouldn’t help him.

Chewie protested, but Leia said, “Put him down. If you shake him like that… you might hurt him.”

She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but somehow she did. Chewie crooned, but he stopped with the shaking.

“We have to get home. Can we fly like this?”

Chewie gave Leia a long look, and passed Han’s limp body into her arms. He examined the panel, head cocked to one side as he muttered a string of Shyriiwook words that Leia vaguely understood as the names of components. The answer was a hesitant affirmative.

"Okay." That calmed Leia's worries a little bit. All they had to do was get Han home, or to a medical facility. "Where are we? How long was I asleep?"

This time, she wasn't as happy with the answer. There were still a couple of hours before they'd come out of lightspeed, and while she couldn't see any sign of external injury on Han, he felt wrong, somehow, like something inside of him was flickering.

_ Luke _ . She reached out, touched him, and he answered back.

_ Leia _ .  _ Han _ .

He knew what had happened. Or at least, he knew as much as Leia was seeing.

_ Luke. You have to help me. What's wrong? _

He didn't know. It came to Leia as a feeling, rather than words, a sense that Luke and Ben and the other Jedi that were with them could see that something was wrong, but not what.

"They're too far away," Leia said, mostly too herself. "They can't. Not in hyperspace. They..."

She felt the panic rising up within her again, that bitter edge to the Force that frightened her.   _ No _ . She was here with Han. She and Chewie were all he had now.  _ What would Luke do, if he were here? _

She cradled him close to her, suddenly aware of how very, very mortal he was. His hair was white, his face lined even in psuedo-peaceful slumber, his breath ragged as his chest rose and fell against hers. They weren't young. But they were too young for this. They should have had decades still to go.

"Don't do this, Han," she berated him, trying to sound angrier than she felt. What would Luke do? How could she help?

Chewie crooned a question that Leia couldn't answer. She shook her head. "I don't know.  I'll stay with him. I'll do what I can. Chewie? You have to get us home."

Leia felt disappointment radiating off him, but Chewie was no fool. He could fly and land the  _ Falcon _ alone. She couldn't. He would be more help in the cockpit. And she here.

Leia breathed. She'd given up the Jedi training for a reason. The Force scared her, and her own relationship with it scared her more. But that fear was nothing next to the fear of losing Han. She'd been so busy, so focused on the Republic. There were still so many things they hadn't done.

She closed her eyes, felt Luke retreat, as if he'd known she didn't have the strength to push him out, but also known that she needed to be alone. The ship around her resonated--a nebulous cloud of connections. Luke would have been able to pinpoint every wire, every circuit. But Leia wasn't a mechanic. Or a Jedi.

_ Focus on Han. _ It was hard to tell if the thought was Luke's, or her own. But whoever it was, they were right. Leia's skills had always been with people.

_ Okay _ , she thought.  _ Come on, Han. Show me what happened. Show me how I can make it right. _

He was here. He was standing at the panel, which was still sparking and shaking, but not as badly as it was right now. He muttered something--Leia couldn't make out the words--and then, without warning, something exploded. Han flew backwards, and…

_ His head. _ He'd hit his head, then, on something...  _ right there. _

Leia let her fingers find the spot, buried within his soft hair, and she clenched her eyes shut to keep tears from forming.  _ Calm _ , she told herself.  _ Calm. What would Luke do? _

Luke would know what to do. He wouldn't have to question.

It was warm, maybe, the spot on the side of his head that Han had apparently injured as he fell. Leia wasn't sure if the warmth was from the injury, or just from Han, from the lifeforce that threatened to leave him.

_ Han. Stay. _

She didn't know if she could do it, pour her own self, her  _ being _ into him. Still, she tried.  _ Take it _ , she hoped.  _ Take whatever I can give you _ .

She wasn't sure if his breathing steadied, or if it was all in her mind.

_ Leia. Help him. _

She heard Luke's voice, then, as surely as if he were standing beside her.

"I can't," she said aloud.

_ You have to. His path... forks here. Leia. Do you understand me? _

Something fell out out of the bottom of her heart.  _ No. _

Han had always been there for her--for her and Luke. He was the grounded one, the one with the practical, cynical answer. The stiff but yielding hug. The grudging, half-sarcastic smile.

He looked too much like an angel, sleeping like this in her lap. This wasn't the Han Solo Leia knew.

_ Please, help me? _

_ You have to find it. _ That was all Luke could do.  _ If you don't... he won't make it home. _

"No..." Leia moaned, in a voice that didn't sound like hers at all.

She half wanted Luke to respond in kind. Instead, what she felt from him was a calm, supporting presence. He believed in her. Leia wanted to take that faith and turn it into courage, but she didn't trust herself the way he did.

_ Calm _ .

She forced herself to focus, to narrow her attention on that tiny, aching portion of Han's skull.

There was a crack there. Leia felt it, shuddering down her heart in an echo to what she saw in his head.  _ I can't... I can't just fix this. _

But the flickering lay deeper still.

_ Go deep. Go deep. _ This wasn't Luke, but her own intuition. A concussion might have knocked Han out, but it wouldn't have made... his road fork.

If she focused, she could see little pieces, little parts of the way his body fit together, but as a whole? There was too much. It was a blur.  _ Focus. Focus. _

She focused on the crack. Let her mind trace along it....

_ There. _

There was a piece missing. A little, tiny, chipped-off piece of bone.

She had to find it.  Leia could feel the sweat beading on her brow, heard the cries of her knees and her back for relief as she kept her crouched position on the floor. And with her novice-at-best Force abilities, she traced the path the little piece had taken through Han's brain.

It was too much. It was too delicate, too serious, too advanced of a thing for a non-Jedi like Leia to fix. But when she found it, buried too deep in synapses she couldn't comprehend, she knew why she had to try.

It was too close... too close to a vessel, an artery, to  _ something _ anyway, that pumped blood.

And Leia didn't need Luke's foresight to know what would happen if that little fragment stayed where it was.

_ Keep it _ , she told herself.  _ Keep it, hold it. _ She couldn't try move it at all. Her goal was just this: to keep it where it was. To hold things, until they could get to someone who actually knew what to do.

_ Come on, Chewie. _  It was just a thought. Anything more, she didn't have the strength to do.

So she held Han. And she thought about all the moments, all the years they'd spent together. Luke was with them, too, from a terrible distance. That closed. And closed. And closed.

When the ship dropped out of hyperspace, Leia had to steel herself, refocus her energy.  They weren't out of danger yet. She had to hold it.  She had to try.

It was Ben, not Luke, who met them at the medical center, with one of his students who had shown a special affinity for the Jedi healing arts.

Leia glanced at her son. He nodded. She could trust this girl, then.

"Do you have him?"

The young apprentice nodded. And Leia finally, finally, broke her hold.

She tried to stand, but her knees wouldn't hold her.  Fifty-six years plus however many hours in a crouch had done her in.  She lay down, then, on the cool floor of the  _ Falcon _ , and waited for Luke to come and take her home.

She didn't sleep. None of them slept, as day turned to night turned to morning.

They were waiting, she thought, for a break that never came. Instead of widening, the crack in their universe grew smaller, until at last a medical droid came to call for them all around noon.

"You know," Han said, when Leia and Luke walked into the room. "I always thought that ship would be the death of me."

He was smiling, but Leia cringed. "Don't say that."

She sat on the edge of his bed, and ran her fingers through his hair.  On the other side of the bed, Luke took his hand.

Han narrowed his eyes, and looked from one Skywalker twin to the other.  "That's funny," he said. "I had the strangest dream..."


End file.
